


Ador(n)ed

by jiminyneesham



Category: Cricket RPF
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, Pining, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 18:34:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23803549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jiminyneesham/pseuds/jiminyneesham
Summary: Everyone is born with a soulmate and the first words you speak to each appear as a mark on your skin.Canon Divergence, they still play cricket and a real life timeline is still accurate.Rating may change
Relationships: Jimmy Anderson/Alastair Cook, Jimmy Anderson/Graeme Swann
Comments: 10
Kudos: 10





	1. Part I - Alastair

**Author's Note:**

  * For [labonnetouche](https://archiveofourown.org/users/labonnetouche/gifts).

> I'm back! Hi!
> 
> This fic has a lot of talk about real life partners, if that's something you don't enjoy please just keep clear.
> 
> Thank you as always to Evie for the beta. A birthday present for labonnetouche

Everyone is born with a soulmate, that’s what you’re told. The first your words you speak to each other emblazoned on your skin, a guiding light to where you’re supposed to be. Alastair was always told you never know when or where you’re going to meet them, his grandparents had each other’s names on the inside of their wrists, having known each other since childhood. His brother and his slightly jumbled ‘you mean a bridle?’ running down the back of his calf, the first words spoken to a woman 5 years his senior in a horse shop when he got his first horse at age 11, her own ‘I’m looking for a birdle’ in a matching spot. There are exceptions of course, people who choose to reject what ‘fate’ has in store for them in favour of marrying someone of their own will.

Alastair is different all together, he doesn’t have that guiding light. Not a word, not a phrase, the only mark on his skin is a jagged scar from an accident involving a glass topped table and a toddler aged Alastair. When you first learn what that soulmark really is, you look for it on other people, but Alastair was still trying to find it on himself. At first he thought it was in a secret place, a place he couldn’t see because his neck didn’t bend like that, he looked with mirrors and lights and always came up disappointed. His mum would flatten his hair with a soft smile when he would ask why he didn’t have one, telling him that maybe it was on the inside and he had to listen to his heart. 

Everyone had a suggestion, his church friends suggested that maybe his soulmate hadn’t been born yet, so God didn’t know what those words were going to be. The minister at their church believed that Alastair’s fate was to serve god, like his own purpose, but Alastair could see the blurry edges of a birthmark poking out from under the sleeve of his vestments. The cricket boys suggested that maybe his soulmate was mute, and that’s why he had no words on his skin. The suggestion that stuck with him though, was that nagging voice planted in his head by the school’s resident bully that maybe he just wasn’t meant to be loved and was going to spend his life alone.

Of course, there were some that had no marks. They weren’t always that way, not like him. Once a soulmate had died the mark would slowly fade, perhaps a way of nature softening the blow. 

At 14 years old Alastair had decided to seek out a group for people with fading marks. His family had moved from Glouscester to Essex, his mum had taken a new job and it was closer to him in Bedford. It meant he could be home with them on the weekends. He was the weird new kid but at least here he wasn’t known as the kid without a soulmate. The group turns out to be like Alcoholics Anonymous for broken hearts. He sat in a room full of people aged over 60 who talked about the loss of the love of their lives. They looked at him with pity and he knew he would never understand what they felt. Halfway through that first meeting a very angry looking girl, about his age, is pushed through the doors by a flustered older woman. She sits opposite him in the circle, arms crossed, a scowl on her face. “HE DIED IN A CAR ACCIDENT, OKAY?” she screamed at the group, pulling down the sleeve of her t-shirt as best she could, but not enough to cover the black-fading to grey mark inside her upper arm. 

“What’s your sad story?” she asks. They are sitting on the steps of the church hall, the only ones left except for the group coordinator. The snow must have started during their meeting, probably causing their parents to be late. Alastair had just shrugged in reply, running a hand through his hair, messing up his curls.

“Talking about it will help, you have to acknowledge your pain,” she replied, a mean mimic of the coordinator who had since moved into the office. Alastair let out a soft laugh. She smiled a little, it was the first time he’d seen her look anything but angry. 

“Mine’s very different. It’s not like yours at all,” he offered as a reply. He was sure he could hear her eye roll.

“Then why do you come to these stupid meetings?” 

“Because I don’t have a mark,” he replied. Then he waits for what usually comes when he tells people. Some try to offer an explanation, others yell at him for being a liar, some offer suggestions, like they are some sort of expert. What always follows is a look of pity for the poor boy that no one will love.

“Everyone has a mark,” she snaps, as she subconsciously rubs where her mark is, or was. She properly turns away from him, pulling her hood up to stop the snow settling in her hair or maybe to shut him out. Now, he doesn’t even belong here.

“Yeah, that's what everyone says,” he mumbles, mostly to himself. He pulls his jacket tighter to his body. 

“I’m Alice, by the way.”

“Alastair.”

-

They become friends quickly. Her family’s farm is not far from his own, so on Fridays she waits for him to come in on the train and they walk home together and then they meet again at the church. Sometimes they skip the meeting and go for dinner. The local Italian place always gives them a complimentary dessert to share. She complains about her week, about school and the girls there that bully her. She occasionally opens up about her therapy, it's mostly something self deprecating in passing, but the more time they spent together the more honest she was about it. Sometimes she took him to the seaside, places she had spent her childhood summers. That’s where they have their first kiss, by the seaside just as she’s finished her ice cream.

Apparently he wasn’t as cool about it when he got home as he thought he was, as his dad warned him the next day that they would not let him marry someone else’s soulmate. That wasn’t the done thing in respectable circles. No matter how hard his parents’ pressed him he wouldn’t tell them Alice’s story, it wasn’t his to tell. He’d reminded them more than once where they had met, but it didn’t make them ease off.

By his 18th birthday they were basically dating, not officially though. They spent most of their spare time together. They kissed more than a few times. They made future plans. He’d had an offer from Essex to play for them and she had planned to go with him. For his birthday his parents had got him a car, nothing fancy but enough to get them, and most of their belongings safely to Chelmsford and most importantly back to Wickham Bishops when he had the time. His mum had been an emotional wreck, crying most of the time that her oldest baby was going to be so far away. Alice had helped him pack most of his things. They’d spent hours going through old newspaper clippings, embarrassing photos of him in his choirboy uniform, old cricket uniforms and a photo of him showing off the stitches holding together the scar on his arm. Alice teases that he must have been an ugly baby because there were no photos of him below the age of 2. His mum laughed, telling him that she promised it wasn’t that, they just couldn't afford a camera. 

Alice offers to stay the night, but there is no way his parents would let them share a bed under their roof. She turns down the offer of a lift home, pressing a kiss to Alastair's cheek.

“I’ll see you at 9 in the morning.”

Alastair has a few things left to pack, all the boxes were full to the brim and in the back of his car.

“Mum, where’s that old suitcase of ours?” he shouts down the stairs.

“In the loft,” she shouts back. Alastair hates the loft. He hates spiders and he hates bugs and it’s old and dusty. He can’t remember the last time anyone went up there. He finds a torch in the bottom of the linen cupboard and makes his way up to the loft. He wrinkles his nose as the dust gets in it, trying not to sneeze and start a reaction of more dust and more sneezes. He looks around with the torch, trying to find something suitcase shaped. Instead he finds a box, probably easier than taking a suitcase and then having to store it. 

He crawls through the small space, reaching for the box and pulling it towards him once it’s in his reach. It’s heavier than he thought it would be. He opens the top, to see what he has to throw onto the loft floor so he can steal the box. He pulls out a photo album, it’s marked _Alastair Nathan 1984-1986._

He flips it open, the first thing he sees is a photo of him as a baby. He flips through the pages, the photos showing him gradually growing up. He laughs softly. His parents are strange at times, spending time with Alice’s family made him realise that, but lying about baby photos was really, really weird. There are photos from his first birthday, he’s in a t-shirt with a picture of a tractor on it, reaching for something on the table.

And there is a blurry, black line on his forearm.

He flicks through a few more photos and the same mark shows up again and again. He runs his finger over the scar on his arm, the same spot where these photos say a black mark should be. 

His soulmark.

He slams the photo album shut and takes it with him back down the stairs. His parents are sitting in the lounge in front of the TV. His legs feel like jelly, he couldn’t walk even if he wanted to. The photo album started to slip and he can’t catch it. Some slip fielder he’s going to be. The album hits the ground with a loud slap and it causes them both to turn around sharply.

“What did it say?” he says, before they can even speak. His mum shakes his head and his dad stands up and steps towards him. He takes a step back away from him.

“What did it say?” his voice is less steady this time and he can feel the familiar sting of tears. His dad picks the album up and hands it behind him to his mum. Neither of them say anything and the tears are falling freely now.

“Tell me,” he had meant for it to be a demand but it was more like a beg, desperate and pleading. 

They both stay silent. His mum is starting to cry and his dad reaches out to comfort him but he shrugs him off.

“You won’t tell me?” he pleads, looking desperately between, hoping one of them will talk.

“No.”

Alastair blindly grabs for his keys in his pocket, walking out the front door as they plead for him to stay. He drives to Alice’s. She opens the door and pulls him in close.

He vows never to go back.

And she vows never to make him.


	2. Part II - Jimmy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the comments on Part I, it's nice to be back writing fic.

Jimmy didn’t give a shit. Fucking soulmate marks, clear as fucking mud. Some people get really clear and direct words. Some people get stupid things like ‘Hi or ‘Hiya’ and have to sort through almost literally every person they meet. Jimmy doesn’t have either. He has “What?” in big fucking jagged letters on his arm. At first it didn’t bother him, but as he got older it became a problem. It wasn’t easy to hide, especially in his cricket uniform. Girls would use it to try and get to him, get with him more accurately. His sister taught him how to cover it with concealer. It didn’t always work but it was enough to get by. 

He’s not a big believer in the whole thing. Surely the universe, god, whatever fucking higher power it is can’t know definitively. Maybe that’s the deal with him. No one fucking knew so lets just let him fumble through life. Hoping for the best. 

He is 22 when he meets Dani in a nightclub. Her mark proudly uncovered. He doubts it would match his own. When he gets closer, her’s is specific. _Really specific._ “Nice to meet you, I’m Charles” in a sprawling cursive wrapping around her left shoulder. It’s her that approaches him in the end. He had been staring after all.

“As long as your name isn’t Charles, my name is Dani.”

-

Turns out he was right. That no one singular power could know for sure who belonged together. After months of dating Dani admits that she knows exactly who ‘Charles’ is. An older, married, cheating and gross casting agent she’d met on a photoshoot when she was 16 years old. She recounted feeling ill at the prospect of being his soulmate, especially when his own mark didn’t match hers, but did match that of his wife of 25 years. She was determined not to marry or be with him. She’d taken her future by the balls. She wasn’t going to be controlled by fate.

Jimmy fell in love. She was passionate and supportive and she loved unreservedly. Sometimes she would run her finger over his mark but she never asked if he was sure, never doubted their relationship. She was so sure of herself and of him. More than he was.

They got married 2 years later. His parents had been wary, knowing that she wasn’t supposed to be his. The older generations were sticklers for the soulmarks, it had to be that they were ‘yours’, marriages wouldn’t be validated otherwise. His mum didn’t say anything, she watched with worried eyes, she was happy for him of course and she always supported his relationship and she adored Dani. 

On his wedding day, while pinning the red rose boutonnière on his lapel, she had softly asked him if he was sure. He nodded. It made her smile, she leant up and kissed his cheek, told him she loved him and smoothed the front of his suit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short chapter to get to know our Jimmy.
> 
> Beta'd by Evie as always. All remaining mistakes are mine because I'm an ass hat
> 
> More soon! ;)


End file.
